Chapter Fifteen Eden #2
“Hmm,” Georgia says, turning her focus back to the road. She pulls off at the coordinates and leaves me in the parking lot.
“Good luck today,” she says.
“You too,” I say automatically. For some reason I feel like she needs luck too.
As she drives off, the day’s humidity wraps itself around me instantaneously. This is gonna be a hellish day for mosquitoes.
But now I can’t even think about bug spray without feeling guilty and embarrassed.
When we gather around JJ for our morning huddle, I try to analyze Leo’s face without catching his eye.
Is he still pissed? Does he regret how he acted on Saturday?
I don’t know why these questions are even bothering to occupy space in my brain; I meant it when I told Georgia I’ve seen his true colors.
Leo isn’t one to apologize. And he probably has no idea that I spent all of yesterday distraught and low-key depressed, reliving our breakup.
He was probably up bright and early taking a morning jog, then blissfully going about his day like the party never happened.
But then I remember the shocked look that flashed across his face during the Truth or Dare game. It was a look of disbelief,
and something else. Could it have been hurt?
I need to stop reading into things. But it’s kind of too late. I’ve spent so much energy trying to guess what Leo is thinking
while also avoiding eye contact that I end up completely missing JJ’s lecture. The huddle breaks up, and I have no idea what
we’re supposed to do.
I turn to Kiera. “Hey, wanna be partners again?”
She looks at me like I’ve grown mushrooms for ears. “I’m partnering with Jorge,” she says. “Weren’t you listening?”
“I, uh—”
“I know, it’s super gendered, forcing all the girls to pair with guys. Hello? Not everyone is binary-conforming.”
I nod, like that was my concern too. “Totally.”
As I watch everyone pair off, my heart starts to sink. Leo is looking right at me. When our eyes meet, he nods.
Much as I don’t want to, I go over to him. I can be angry, but I don’t want to feel guilty, so I may as well rip off the Band-Aid.
“Look, about the bug spray—it was immature. I shouldn’t have—”
“I’m sorry, Eden,” he says, cutting me off.
“I— You— What?”
“I know you’d rather die than be partners, but you’re stuck with me.”
I can’t read his expression at all. “But . . . you basically hate me. Why don’t you just partner with someone else?”
His eyes seem brighter on this sunless day, sparkling almost. “I don’t hate you. You hate me.”
I stare at him.
I mean, yeah, he’s not wrong. I do kind of hate him. I hate him for the hurt he caused me. He earned that hate. So what am I supposed to say?
He shakes his head. “I just feel stupid.”
“You feel stupid? You’re not the one who ended up with pepper spray all over their legs.”
He laughs dryly. “I feel stupid for thinking we could be friends. But I thought about it, and I decided I’m not ready to stop
trying.”
The statement sits there in the heaviness of the air, and I yearn for a breeze, for anything to interrupt this tension, this
stillness. Friends?!
His eyes scan my face, but I still don’t know how to answer him. He sighs. “I guess sometimes there’s just too much history,
huh.”
I nod slowly, still processing the idea that he wanted to be friends. . . . When two years ago, that day in the library, he
acted like he didn’t want to be in the same room with me, or even the same school.
Now I just feel . . . confused. And a little sad.
If he really can’t see how badly he betrayed me, if he can’t apologize for it, then what kind of friendship could we ever build?
You can’t be friends with someone who runs that hot and cold.
You can’t be friends with someone you don’t trust.
By now, all the other partners have started marching toward the woods. I look to Leo. “What are we even doing?”
“You mean me and you?” He shoves his hands into his pockets.
“No, I mean, us, as in, Boundless Horizons.” I gesture at the disappearing groups. “I wasn’t really listening to JJ’s speech this morning.
I guess I was . . . distracted.”
Leo shakes his head, in an Oh, Eden kind of way, that’s both familiar and condescending. And annoying. But I feel a little rush of relief, too because here’s the Leo I know. I almost feel more comfortable when I can tell I’m irritating him. At least then I know where we both stand.
“I’ll give you a hint,” he says as we start walking in the same direction everyone else went—directly into a swamp of trees.
“It starts with a K.”
My mind spins. “Kickboxing?”
“What? No.”
“Um . . . karaoke? Koala observation? KFC?”
He shakes his head again and laughs. “Kayaking, jeez. Didn’t realize that was going to be so challenging.”
“Hey, I think karaoke with koalas—and a quick KFC run first—sounds like a dreamy way to spend the day. They should really
have let me plan this.”
“Maybe next year. Though I should warn you . . . I don’t think koalas eat chicken.”
We continue trekking through the woods, with Leo leading the way. “That’s fine, I’ll get extra cherry pie poppers for the koalas.”
“You always did have a sweet tooth,” he says.
I remember everything, he said last week.
Not everything, clearly, I want to say to him now, but I keep my mouth shut. “We can’t all be health freaks,” I say instead. “Some of us have to live
our lives.”
“And you’ve always marched to the beat of your own drum,” he says. “That hasn’t changed either.”
I straighten my shoulders as I walk. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Good, you should,” he says. “I love that about you.”
I swallow hard at a spike of pain in my chest. The word love makes me feel ill with confusion. Like a long, fine acupuncture needle going straight through to the tenderest muscle.
How dare he use that word with me, after everything.
We’re the last people to arrive at the boathouse, which means we get the shitty oars, and a kayak that is almost definitely
going to sink to the bottom of the lake from the looks of it. We shove it into the shallows, and he holds it “steady” (not
possible) while I climb in first, crawling awkwardly to the front.
He gets in after me, and we wobble a bit. I gasp, trying to act not freaked out.
Then things smooth out as he shoves us away from the shore and begins paddling, sprinkling my back with droplets from his
oar.
I frankly hope we do sink to the bottom of the lake so I don’t have to sit here at the front of the kayak, feeling Leo’s eyes boring into my back.
At first, he tries to give me instructions on how to “optimize” the angle of my paddle to “maximize impact,” but eventually
he gives up. I’m sure he’s sitting there silently judging me now.
I guess it’s better than me being at the back, having to stare at him all day. His rippling back muscles as he maneuvers the oar, cutting cleanly through the water with expert precision.
Eventually, the peacefulness of the lake stretching out before me starts to bring a sense of calm. Birds I don’t know the
names of swoop and dive and soar above us. Because it’s gray, and a Monday, there aren’t any noisy motorboats or water-skiers.
I start to see something beautiful in the shades of misty gray: the blue-tinged surface of the lake, the charcoal of the shoreline,
the deep forest gray-green of the trees, and above, the pale white-gray of the sky, clouds dancing in slow motion across it.
Everything seems blurred and wet, like a watercolor.
Maybe the past is like that, too—misty and interpretive, shape-shifting to the eye of the beholder. I start to wonder if Leo
and I just have two totally different ways of seeing it.
For the first time, I’m curious to know his version.
Not that I’ll ever ask. He doesn’t need to know how much weight it all still holds for me. The crap I went through is mine
to process, not his. It’s mine to hold on to or let go of or heal from when I’m ready, at my own pace. There’s nothing I need
from him anymore.
I’m at peace with it, I tell myself. Everything happens for a reason.
I feel a new kind of sadness filling my chest. The sadness of accepting that sometimes bad things just happen. I know it’s
not the same as what my cousins went through when Uncle Mitch died. What our whole family went through.
But there’s a little piece of that same feeling inside me right now—a little piece of grief.
And I finally realize what it is I’m grieving when it comes to Leo.
I’m grieving the Eden of before.
The Eden who didn’t know any better.
The morning floats by slowly, like the clouds, and then in a blink, it’s over.
It starts to rain during lunch, and JJ tells us we can go home early today. A gift I wasn’t expecting. Normally, she warns,
we need to be prepared for any kind of inclement weather. But her weather app is reporting a storm, and we don’t have to deal
with it today.
Oh, so she gets to use apps out here? Still, I’m happy. I’ll take a storm right now. I’ve needed a storm, I think.
But then, right as we’re all packing up our gear again, JJ adds, “And folks, whoever you’re partnered with today, you’ll be
with all week—plus for the final overnight camping trip on Friday.”
What?!
I dare not make eye contact with Leo. I just hurriedly stuff my things into my backpack and pull out the deeply impractical poncho I got from Zara, which looked effortlessly chic and casual on the online model but makes me look like a walking kite.
I throw it on and start trudging in the direction of the parking lot.
“Eden, wait up!” Leo jogs up and says, infuriatingly, “You’re going the wrong way again.”
I huff out a breath and turn around without saying anything.
“Look,” he says. “We’re going to be partnered all week, so let’s just try to get along. Please? Truce?”
I stop walking and stare at him. The rain is soaking through his dark hair—I’m actually shocked he doesn’t have some sort
of perfect rain attire for that. Water drips down his face, like tears, and he’s breathing heavily. Maybe from jogging to
catch up with me.
Truce. Can I give him that? I think of the peace and acceptance I found on the lake this morning.
“Fine,” I say, sticking out a hand. “Truce.”
He takes my hand in his, slowly, gently. I feel a flood of warmth at his touch, at the tenderness with which he’s holding
my hand, like it’s a delicate thing he could break. Like he doesn’t want to let go.
“Truce,” he says quietly, and shakes my hand.
Then he lets it go.
We start walking again.
“Do you need a ride home?” he offers.
I think about calling Georgia. She’s probably off work, given the weather. But then I’d have to stand there in the rain waiting for her to come.
“Okay,” I say. It’s just a ride. It’s not a big deal. He owes me that much.
He owes me so much more.
We get into his car, and I pull the poncho hood back off my head. Rain comes down loudly on the windshield and roof. I shiver.
“Are you warm enough?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I say, though I still feel shivery, fluttery, like my muscles can’t relax.
We drive back to my house in silence.
“Eden,” he says as we pull up in the driveway. He turns off the engine and faces me.
I turn to face him, too. With the engine off, the sound of the pouring rain consumes everything. The air in the car suddenly
feels electric.
“Thanks for the ride,” I say haltingly, before he can finish his sentence.
And then I grip the door handle and fling the door open, throwing myself out into the storm. I run across the soggy lawn with
my head down. I don’t look back to see if he’s watching me, or if he’s already left. The rain is too heavy, and anyway, I
don’t want to know.